Cost-minimizing food budgets in Ghana

Attaining the daily required nutritional recommendations is a major challenge in Ghana. This paper is tries to determine the cheapest basket of food items that satisfy the recommended daily nutritional requirements of the average Ghanaian.

The document presumes that to satisfy his/her nutritional requirement while minimising costs, an average Ghanaian should consume sorghum, yams, cassava, coconuts and milk. Apart from milk, all other food items are produced in many parts of Ghana, and thus readily available and frequently consumed by many people - both rich and poor.

The paper finds out the following:

• an average Ghanaian can spend $0.36 per day on his nutritional requirements; the figure is small because most needed food stuffs are already available at households
• if the price of a component of the food budget increase by a small amount, the components of the food budget and the solution will remain unchanged, while food expenditure will increase
• if an increase in price is outside the lower and upper limits the amount of that food item in the food basket will change
  

Accordingly, the authors conclude that:

• the nutrient intake of a Ghanaian can be increased without any significant effect on food expenditure
• the average Ghanaian will be able to curtail food expenditure by about 40% and have enough of his income left for other financial obligations
• as a result human livelihood and poverty can be improved in Ghana